Letter of the Week – “What a revelation compared to every other copy I have heard.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Just had a chance to listen to my new hot stamper.  Wow! What a revelation compared to every other copy I have heard.

Quiet vinyl, huge soundstage, great tonal balance, amazing level of detail. Sounds even better when cranked up as you know : ).

Been waiting for this one for a while and it has been so worth it! Thanks again!

Rob

Rob,

So happy to hear that you enjoyed it as much as we did. Like you say, the louder the better, and only a top quality pressing will let you turn up the volume as loud as your system can play.

One reason turning up your volume is such a great test is that the louder the problem, the harder it is to ignore.

Thanks for your letter,

TP

P.S.

Like Rob, some of our other customers have written us letters about our Hot Stamper pressings being revelatory, and we know exactly what they mean. We heard them ourselves, in a shootout, head to head with other copies.

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Dick Schory – Music for Bang, Baaroom and Harp

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

  • Stunning Living Stereo sound through this original pressing, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, just shy of our Shootout Winner – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s a real treat to hear such a crazy assortment of percussion instruments with this kind of amazingly clear, high-resolution sound!
  • This copy was just plain bigger, richer and clearer than practically all others in our recent shootout
  • It also helps that both of these sides are in correct polarity, a subject you can read about on the blog if you would like to know more
  • If you’re a fan of percussion extravaganzas, this Living Stereo from 1958 is about as good as it gets

The hottest stamper pressings of this album are Demo Discs for three important qualities we listen for in our record auditions. Each of the links below will take you to other recordings we have found to be potentially superior in these areas of reproduction.

  1. Size and space,
  2. Correct timbre and
  3. Tubey Magic.

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS List of Super Discs, and rightfully so. It certainly can be a Super Disc, but only when you have the right pressing. This is one of the Demo Discs on the TAS List which truly deserves its status when, and only when, you have the right copy. (The typical copy is quite good, but it sure doesn’t sound like this.) Nothing else in our shootout could touch it. And it’s IN PHASE. Many copies are not.

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Eric Clapton – Self-Titled

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

  • Outstanding sound throughout this UK Polydor pressing, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom
  • Man, what a revelation to hear this old favorite sound so remarkably rich and open – you’ll have a very difficult time finding one that sounds this good lying around in the bins, that’s for sure
  • Both sides here are superb – the clarity, transparency, and presence outperformed most of the others we heard in our most recent shootout
  • Getting rid of the gritty, grainy, edgy qualities of the sound, while keeping all the detail and texture and resolution we know has to be on the tape is a tricky business, but this copy pulled it off better than nearly all of what we played
  • Forget the domestic Atcos – they suffer from all the problems listed above
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Throughout the album, Clapton turns out concise solos that de-emphasize his status as guitar god, even when they display astonishing musicality and technique.”
  • Here’s a question for you: was 1970 the best year ever for rock and pop music?

This is not your usual Clapton album, and that’s a good thing because most Clapton albums are full of filler. Not so here — almost every song is good, and many are superb.

Horns Are Key

The sound of the horn arrangements backing practically every song on the album are key to the quality of the pressing and mastering. Blurry, smeary, leading-edge-challenged horns on this album are the kiss of death, as are grainy-gritty transistory ones. When the horns have clarity, correct tonality, plenty of space around them and sound full-bodied, probably every other instrument in the soundscape will too.

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Paganini on Heavy Vinyl – Where Is the Outrage?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paganini Available Now

Years ago we managed to get hold of the Heavy Vinyl pressing put out by Fenn Music in Germany, about which a well known record dealer on the web (you may recognize the style) had this to say:

“Stunning Reissue Of EMI ASD 440 Recorded In Stereo In 1961. This Recording Featuring The Royal Philharmonic Conducted By Alberto Erede Provides Convincing Proof, If Any Were Needed, That Menuhin Was One Of The Great Violinists Of The 20th Century.”

The “convincing proof” provided by this record is that those responsible for it are Rank Incompetents of the Worst Kind (see what I did there?).

Screechy, bright, shrill, thin and harsh, it’s hard to imagine worse sound than this piece of Heavy Vinyl trash delivers.

Had I paid good money to buy this pressing from 2004 in the hopes of hearing the supremely talented Yehudi Menuhin of 1961 tear it up on Paganini’s legendary first two concertos, I can tell you one thing: I would be pissed.

Where is the outrage in the audiophile community over this kind of trash?

I have yet to see it. I suspect I will grow quite a bit older and quite a bit grayer before anyone from the audiophile commentariat notices just how bad this record sounds. I hope I’m proven wrong.

Screechy, bright, shrill, thin and harsh, it’s hard to imagine worse sound from this piece of Heavy Vinyl garbage.

In other words, no trace of the original’s (or the early reissue’s) analog sound. At most I may own one or two classical CDs that sound this bad, and I own quite a few. When audiophiles of an analog bent tell you they don’t like the sound of CDs, this is why they don’t like them: they sound like this junky Heavy Vinyl record.

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Cheap Trick – Dream Police

More of the Music of Cheap Trick

  • Boasting two STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Dream Police you’ve heard
  • This copy was doing everything right — there was nothing close to it in our shootout, so if you can put up with some surface noise, you are going to be to hear this album sound better than you ever imagined
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful album, a vintage pressing like this one is the way to go
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records, but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Underneath the gloss, there are a number of songs that rank among Cheap Trick’s finest, particularly the paranoid title track… it would later feel like one of the group’s last high-water marks.”

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Art Pepper – Thursday Night at the Village Vanguard

More of the Music of Art Pepper

  • This original 1979 Contemporary pressing boasts a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • The sound was bigger, richer and livelier than practically all others we played – above all it’s balanced, avoiding many of the problems we heard on other pressings
  • If anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary, in this case Bob Simpson and Lester Koening
  • The first of four volumes that make up the Art Pepper Village Vanguard set, recorded live over a three-night period in New York in July 1977
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The great altoist soars on lengthy versions of ‘Valse Triste’ (in a particularly passionate take) and ‘Goodbye.’ In addition to Pepper, his trio – pianist George Cables, bassist George Mraz, and drummer Elvin Jones – is also in top form, and the music is consistently stimulating and emotional.”

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Chet Atkins and Les Paul – Chester & Lester

More of the Music of Chet Atkins

  • Chester & Lester makes its Hot Stamper debut with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this vintage RCA pressing
  • Huge, rich, present, with an abundance of energy and great depth and room around the guitars — it’s all here
  • The notes for this copy rave about the sound — apparently, this live in the studio recording from 1975 has the sound that RCA and Chet Atkins were famous for back in the 50s and 60s. Who knew?
  • Chester & Lester won the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 1976
  • Les Paul’s recordings from back in the day can be off the charts Tubey Magical, but the music is rarely compelling, so we don’t do shootouts for his records anymore, but you can be sure this wonderful sounding title will be a regular on the site from now on
  • 4 stars: “After eight years away from the microphones, Les Paul joined forces with country music’s Chet Atkins in a marvelously relaxed, tasty session of cross-cultural jamming. You won’t have any problem telling Chester and Lester apart on these tracks; Les’ bright, almost metallic sound and twirling, yet now more economical flurries are a world away from Chet’s mellow fingerpicking, lightly tarted with echo. Yet the two styles play brilliantly off each other….”

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Letter of the Week – John Wesley Harding Has Playback Issues

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of John Wesley Harding he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom,   

So many great records in this batch, but some solid misses too — details coming. John Wesley Harding for example sounds great but has some serious distortion through much of side two; a bit ’too vintage’, in spite of the sound it seems once to have had.

Dear Sir,

Definitely check your front end setup on this one, there is no actual distortion on the record, just sound that may be hard to reproduce.

My advice would be to make sure you have replaced your cartridge recently.

Carts that get old have a problem with records like these. We know, we replace our cartridge every three months when hard-to-play records start to sound strained or congested and gritty.

The sheen of massed strings, a sound critical to the orchestral recordings we play, are impossible to reproduce correctly with an older-than-it-should-be unit. A fresh cartridge can make all the difference in the sound of  difficult to reproduce records.

Keeping a cartridge installed for too long is a mistake made by 100% of the audiophiles I have ever known.

The other explanation could be that our microfine tip is playing deeper in the groove and missing whatever damage is encoded above it, damage which may have been caused by the older cartridges of the day that were used to play the record by the previous owner or owners. We can’t say it doesn’t happen.

We can say that if you bring this record back, the next person to buy it has a roughly 98% chance of keeping it. Maybe one out of five hundred or so ever come back a second time. At least that’s how it has worked out over the last twenty-five years.

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Sibelius / Violin Concerto / Ricci

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jean Sibelius Available Now

This is a wonderful sounding London Stereo Treasury pressing featuring one of our favorite violinists, Ruggiero Ricci, performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor.

The tone of the violin on side one is just right — every nuance of Ricci’s bowing can clearly be heard.

While the violin sounds amazing on side one, the orchestra lacks a bit of weight.

This side is also not quite as Tubey Magical as it could be. In our opinion, however, the violin tone and the incredible dynamics are more than enough to make us want to award this record a fairly high grade.

Side two actually has a bit more fullness, but this also seems to rob the violin of some of its presence. 

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With the Right VTF the Record Comes to Life

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with the highest fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.

Here is Robert’s latest posting.

With the RIGHT VTF the Record COMES to LIFE

Robert writes:

The other day I checked the VTF, yet again, and my scale showed it was set at 1.807. I adjusted it to 1.800 and went back to playing records. Was it now actually at 1.800? Impossible to really know for sure.

But it did seem, if 1.800 is the indeed the magic number, that I’d finally hit it.

I was playing Miles Davis Friday Night At The Blackhawk, an extremely well recorded live album. My copy had generally sounded excellent. On this occasion, the record sounded . . . imagine this, exactly like a live performance.

Of course there was some occasional surface noise and, of course, I wasn’t actually listening to a live performance. It was a record after all.

But never before that moment had a record convinced me so completely I was hearing something I wasn’t. Somehow one tiny little change had managed to strip away just enough of the remaining artifice to lift the experience of hearing a record from very live sounding to uncannily real.

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